Uxbridge, England, United Kingdom
@matthew-james-adams
Member since 2015
My name is Matthew, I grew up in the UK, am half Australian, and have lived in France, Germany, Portugal, and China. I am an anthropologist, and have spent much of my adult life travelling or working abroad.
Interested in Books & Literature
Interested in Economics
Fluent in English
Learning Chinese (Simplified)
Why I'm on Couchsurfing
On the recommendation of friends.
Music, Movies, and Books
Big fan of Radiohead, but I like anything and everything. Everything from Satie to reggaeton, hip-hop to electro swing, or chillstep to K-pop. Movies ? Aside having something of an obsession with Chinese cinema (we're mainly talking Edward Yang, Jia Zhangke sort of stuff, but I do like a good Hong Kong action flick as well) I'm pretty easy, I try to watch as many films as I can as I think it's important to cultural education, and one's cultural education should be as broad as it is comprehensive. Books, hmm. By chance I have always tended toward Japanese authors, particularly the likes of Kawabata Yasunari or Mishima Yukio but I studied literature a few years after sixth form and try to read widely. I'm currently indulging a guilty pleasure of systematically binge-reading Murakami's oeuvre but I'm not sure if this is indicative.
One Amazing Thing I've Done
No idea what to put here, when I was working for Oxfam in Germany (in Frankfurt of all places) I caught the Black Death (which is rather rare nowadays) and so that's pretty cool. I am not sure what I really did, as I was rather passive in this, but I was certainly amazed - and quite thankful (to survive).
Teach, Learn, Share
I teach all sorts, I have taught EFL for years now, and I have tutored broadly in the social sciences and humanities.
What I Can Share With Hosts
Umm, I can share company, good stories, whatever cigarettes I have leftover, (?); if I have anything at all I will exhaust it pampering any and all about me, and when I don't I'm sorry.
My Interests
Philosophy ? Politics and social theory ? I hate to say that I specialised in economics at uni but I have since switched to studying anthropology. I like playing music and, cliché of all clichés, I would love to be a writer. I also like (and study) video games/VR.
